


The Origin Story of Johann Krauss

by Kiar



Category: Hellboy (Movies)
Genre: Backstory, Disintegration, Gen, Hellboy - Freeform, Hellboy II, Minor Violence, Origin Story, Paranormal, Prologue, The Golden Army
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-16
Updated: 2016-09-16
Packaged: 2018-08-15 06:48:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8046370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiar/pseuds/Kiar
Summary: Seeing as how we didn't get Johann Krauss's backstory in Hellboy II, I decided to write my own.





	The Origin Story of Johann Krauss

When she died, he didn't take her to a morgue.  
  
The moment she stopped breathing he waited, holding his breath, as if she could borrow his and her chest would start rising and falling once more. It didn't, however, so after a moment of quickly dismissed disbelief, he moved into action. Carefully lifting her frail body between his arms, the doctor carried her to the basement. He had been preparing for this eventuality for several months. Perhaps he had been preparing for it his whole life.  
  
The laboratory was kept cold to preserve the body. Even so, fluorescent vials of liquid smoked and bubbled on the countertops, hooked together by a precise network of glass tubes. The flickering glow of a Bunsen burner illuminated some of the vials, mixing an eerie red with the otherwise blue and white radiance of the solutions. Makeshift shelves were nailed to the walls, containing carefully labeled fluids and powders, more than one of which shifted with subtle cognizance.  
  
Behind all of the equipment, shoved into the shadowed corners of the room, were a handful of more unexpected adornments. A few plush chairs and carved end tables lined the walls next to the chemistry tables, and beneath a white sheet and several planks of wood pried from a delivery crate was a new, hardly used couch. Here there were touches of what the room had once been, before it had become repurposed into its present, more practical state.  
  
Johann's breath fogged before him as he stopped in the middle of the room to lower the body onto an aluminum table. He laid her down gently, as if he were afraid of waking her from a deep sleep, then stood for a moment to just gaze down at her form. Once more, he had to carefully cap his emotions and continue with the procedure. In her current state, he had no time to waste on remorse.  
  
The table had been affixed with several leather straps, which he now used to secure her neck, chest, wrist, and ankles. Next he removed her jewelry, starting with her necklace and earrings – which she insisted upon wearing till the very end – and finishing with her wedding ring. This he placed into a small, cloth sack, in turn placing that into his breast pocket.  
  
Retrieving a cloth swab and a fogging, viscous brew from his chemistry table, Johann began to apply dots of gel to the woman's body, connecting the marks to draw circuits upon which the energy was intended to flow. He had studied the diagrams so thoroughly that now he hardly even needed to reference his drawings, the ecteneic pathways having become practically imprinted on his mind. Johann's lips moved as he worked, muttering the names of the humoric channels he was linking across the body. All his life's work to come to a head in an experiment far more personal than he ever could have imagined.  
  
Once the gel had been given a moment to air and become tacky, Johann applied the electrodes and hooked them to copper wires that spilled away from the woman's body in rivulets of burnt gold. The wires trailed along the floor to where they coalesced at a socket in the back wall, through which the braid disappeared.  
  
Over the next quarter hour several more iterations of powders, gels, and liquids were applied, each substance more volatile than the last. By the time Johann was done a strange pattern had emerged, and the woman's body (table, clothes, and all) were decorated in archaic runes, some of which seemed to buzz, and others of which gave off hues that had no name in any human tongue. The mood of the room had grown noticeably darker, and the mixing of the ethers hung thick and intangible in the air. Things of the Other World had been drawn to the anchors Johann had created, itching dangerously close to the fabric of his own reality. Of course, that only meant it was working.  
  
After checking and double checking that all the markings and plasms had been appropriated placed, Johann finally spared a moment for himself. He pulled rubber boots over his soles and snapped gloves over his hands, and over his for head he placed a welder's mask, keeping the lid raised to navigate the room. As he crossed to the light switch – seemingly innocuous, though he had rewired the lines several weeks before – he realized he had come to the point of no return.  
  
Johann paused to look over the lab, recalling all the work that had gone into preparing for this moment. All the heartache. All the sleepless nights. Even before her sickness this had been his expertise. He was a doctor of ectoplasmic research, after all. If anyone was meant to bring her back, it was him.  
  
Johan heaved a heavy sigh, resisting the urge to remove his gloves to massage his temples. He was weary, but not sad. Perhaps he felt like such an empty shell because all his despair and passion and been distilled out of him in the time spent laboring over countless tomes, and had since collected into the scattered vials spread across his work table. He found the thought darkly comforting. Maybe a bit of his own spirit would assist in bringing back hers. Holding onto that final thought as he lowered the welding mask over his eyes, Johann Krauss performed his last act as a mortal man and flipped the switch.  
  
Electricity surged through the copper wires. The body jerked in response, twitching to the electric impulses at currencies far higher than any human should have been able to take. Small jolts of static jumped between the body and the aluminum table, and the metallic smell of ozone slowly began to permeate the room. Johann held his breath, daring half a step closer to the table.  
  
As he'd planned, the electricity was being channeled along the gelatinous lines he had painted over her body, illuminating the runes as the energy pooled at each of the anchor points. The frigid air now seemed to dance with static, a tangible white noise that prickled the atmosphere. He could feel it as surely as he could feel the cold – he wasn't alone.  
  
"Dear?" he called softly, but his voice was buried beneath the crackle of electricity and the humming of his apparatuses. "My love, are you here?"  
  
A whisper that cut through the mechanical noises, looping about the table, vials, and Johann. He spun in a circle, trying to make out the words.  
  
"Love?" he called again, and it seemed a breath passed by his ear.  
  
It rasped, "Life."  
  
"Life?" Johann repeated. "Yes," he said, turning back to the table. "Yes, I return it to you! I'm here, I'm here, love. Come back!"  
  
More an instinct than an actual sensation, Johann felt the presence circle him. "Life?" it whispered again. "Warmth." The voice grew closer and further, seemingly to oscillate between a great distance and one disturbingly close.  
  
"Warmth…" Something pricked at Johann's arm. "Flesh."  
  
A shiver traveled down Johann's spine. The overwhelming relief he'd felt moments before suddenly wavered, undermined with doubt. "Love?" he called again, trying to catch sight of the spirit. Something hazy had taken shape over the woman's body, something that could only be seen clearly from the corner of one's eye. The glow wisped around like a blowing fog, then sharpened into abrupt clarity. There was no face, but it had a mouth, and every essence of the being – the curl of its smoke, the grin of its maw – screamed _hunger._  
  
This thing was not his wife.  
  
Johann took a startled step back, yanking one of the electrodes free from the table in his haste. The wire caught on his pants and a clenching jolt shot up his leg, causing Johann to cry out in pain. His muscles seized from the electrical shock and he collapsed to the ground, struggling against the current to free himself from his entanglement. The spirit wavered closer, watching.  
  
"Give," the voice whispered. "GIVE," it cried. Johann pulled away from the electrode and scrambled back. The switch on the wall. Was it too late to cut the power? The specter followed him.  
  
"Give… warmth… flesh. Us… give us."  
  
Johann choked down a desperate scream, shaking as much in fear as from the electrocution as he stumbled to his feet and towards the switch.  
"Warmth," the spirit said, sinking into the ground. Its form diffused against the concrete floor, threads of its essence twisting towards the copper wires and causing bright flashes of static discharge where they met. "Warmth…" it whispered.  
  
Johann reached the wall, taking hold of the switch just as a surge of energy ripped through the room. The copper wires exploded into ribbons of light, and a bolt of electricity ripped from the wall to throw Johann across the room. He lay there, dazed, even as the lights burned into the retinas of his shielded eyes. The room had become a lightning storm, and he was caught in the middle of it.  
  
"Life," the electricity crackled all around him. "More. Give us more!"  
  
Smoke. Heat. A burst of light and crack of thunder shook him from his previous stupor as a bolt of lightning struck the wall beside him. Johann rolled onto his side, fighting against the pain and shock as he forced himself his feet. Pulling himself up the wall, he coughed against an acrid smell of scorched stone, fumbling through his gloves as he tried to raise the front of his shirt to his nose. Keeping his other hand against the wall, he limped for the stairs.  
  
A cry of frustration and another discharge of electricity, this time in front of him. Johann flinched back for a moment, then pushed forward more quickly – it was trying to keep him from leaving, and he wasn't keen on giving the spirit another chance to stop him.  
  
He was only a pace before the stairwell when it struck him in the back.  
  
Johann didn't feel the pain as the electricity coursed through his limbs, lungs, and heart. The scientist in him reasoned it was the adrenaline, that he wouldn't feel it until the shock wore off. In that instant of clarity he also marveled at how he could see the circuits of energy as they burned through his shirt and gloves, collecting about the ring in his breast pocket, and the ring on his finger. It was beautiful.  
  
Then came the pain. It tore through him in a torrent, pulling at every essence of his body at once. He could feel it in his teeth, in his eyes and fingers and mind. It burned all the way down to his soul.  
  
The voice cried out in glee, and Johann screamed.  
  
Even if he'd had the mind to struggle or lost the ability to stand, the electricity kept him pinned in place. More ropes of lightning followed the first, securing their prey. Had the spirit been younger it might have already killed him, but this being was old and more careful, and had learned how best to drink a mortal's life away.  
  
Through the screams of unending pain, Johann watched his clothes and skin peel away. They molted, like leaves falling from an autumn tree, to be hungrily lapped up by tongues of electricity. Then came his muscles, the claws of light raking through his blood vessels and tissue to tear his flesh away. They dissolved as easily as his skin, and the moment before his eyes evanesced from their sockets, he saw the white of bone. And somehow, even as he dissolved from existence, he continued to scream.  
  
In a matter of seconds his body had been consumed. His clothes, mask, and boots had all gone with. Everything had vanished – everything but the two bits of metal he'd carried on his person, and these now clattered to the floor and rolled away, suddenly unsupported by hand or breast pocket.  
  
The electricity released him, and Johann fell to the floor, and fell to pieces. His mind was only distantly aware that it was over. That the spirit had left. That the electrical storm had abated. Only one thought echoed through the dulling pain of his mind. _How?_  
  
_How was he still alive?_  
  
And then he knew the answer quite clearly: He wasn't.  
  
Johann gathered himself, pulling his essence close from where it had been pooling across the basement floor. He wanted nothing more at that moment than to fall into a deep and dreamless sleep, but some primal instinct urged him to move, warning that should he remain as he was for too long, he risked dissipation.  
  
With sight that wasn't entirely seeing, Johann looked around his laboratory, spying a series of glass beakers and flasks that were clustered in the corner of his work bench. Johann pulled himself upwards, but he had not yet learned how to maneuver the white cloud of smoke that now comprised his being, and with the first step he collapsed back down into the floor. Once more he summoned his essence back to himself, panicking momentarily as he felt some of himself slip into the drainage grate in the center of the room. This time he glided over the ground, moving in rolling waves of smoke like a storm cloud over a quiet sea.  
  
Getting up to the counter was difficult, but not impossible. Once there he deposited himself in any container he could fill, headless to whatever substance might already be inside. Reckless, perhaps, but at that point he had more pressing concerns.  
  
When not consciously controlling his form, he seemed to act like a liquid or heavy gas, so though the containers did not have any stops, he felt dissipation was no longer an immediate risk. A more permanent vessel would have to be found in the long term, of course, but for now…  
  
Johann almost laughed – if such a thing were possible in his current state. She would have scolded him for thinking so far ahead when he hadn't yet even taken time to process what had happened in the present. What had happened…  
  
A heavy weight suddenly fell over Johann. Lord, what had he done? How could all of his plans and calculations have gone so wrong? It shouldn't be possible. It wasn't fair. All this to bring her back, and now she would never…  
  
Johann had remained stoic when she was diagnosed. He hadn't wavered when her health began to slip. Even at her death he hadn't truly mourned, because he had always known that he would be able to fix it.  
  
It wasn't until now, that he no longer had eyes or a mouth, that he wept. 

  


______________________________________________________________

  


" You say I'm not human, but on the contrary, I understand your pain all too well. You see, a long time ago, I lost the woman I love, and that was, in fact, the cause of my present misfortune. I will tell you about it someday..."  
  
-Johann Krauss, Hellboy 2


End file.
